Giace l'alta Cartago: à pena i segni
De l'alte sui ruine il lido serba:
Muoino le città, muoino i regni;
Copre i fasti e le pompe arena et herba:
E l'huom d'esser mortal per che si sdegni.
These lines of Tasso are a curious specimen of literary robbery—being made up entirely of passages from Lucan and Sulspicius. Lucan says of Troy
Jam tota teguntur
Pergama dumetis: etiam perire ruinæ:
and Sulspicius in a letter to Cicero says of Megara, Egina, Corinth, &c.—“Hem! nos homunculi indignamur si quis nostrum interiit, quorum vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant.”
An epigram upon the subject of Francois de Bassompiere being released from the Bastille upon the death of Richelieu, is a strange mixture of lofty thought and puerile conceit.
Enfin dans l'arriere saison
La fortune d'Armand s'accorde avec la mienne:
France, Je sors de ma prison
Quand son ame sort de la sienne.
The line, “France, Je sors de ma prison,” is the anagram of Francois de Bassompiere.